UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

lol I haven’t. Maybe I’ll see if Mick West is hiring.

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Let me preface by saying that it’s not that I think you or anyone else, including me at times, has a “lower” standard for evidence, but we are willing to accept certain eye witness claims for example, to stand for something more than hearsay. Not in all cases. Like in the tic tac video, I want to believe that trained, skilled professionals who have seen thousands of unusual things come across their radar, would be telling the truth and aren’t manufacturing a story for fame and/or money. They really believe that what they saw that night defied the laws of physics. But, that doesn’t mean it was something from another planet.

Therein lies a happy medium of adhering to the integrity of science and opening my mind to other physical possibilities, where science has yet to have answers. And that is where I sit.

 

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Sure, the smarter "skeptics" probably do believe in the reality of "unidentified aerial phenomena" in the raw sense of aerial phenomena that are currently unidentified. It's hard to deny that unidentified cases exist.

The more fundamental disagreement seems to me to revolve around the preexisting assumptions that people bring to the discussion regarding what kind of accounts, descriptions and explanations of the most puzzling of these unidentified aerial phenomena that they are willing to accept.

Earlier in this thread, even my own rather innocuous "something seems to have been physically present and I have no idea what it was" came under concerted attack over and over. Presumably I was supposed to lose my interest in the case in question, in happy confidence that it was probably just birds or whales or radar defects, all come together in some "comedy of errors". Presumably I was supposed to be willing to ridicule anyone that thought there might be something more happening. So...

Must all 'UAP' cases reduce without remainder to what Sciforums calls "mundane" explanations? To explanations in terms of concepts and beliefs that are everyday, familiar, already-accepted and uninteresting?

Or should investigators leave open the possibility that something extraordinary (in the extra-ordinary sense) might be happening in some of these cases? And not constantly try tooth-and-nail to dismiss the very possibility, often by ridiculing it in the most insulting terms?

I'm not convinced that they have any standard at all.

If we dismiss what our opponents say as "woo", assigning it a-priori close to zero possibility of being true, then any speculation that we produce might seem to us to have a higher likelihood of being correct. Without any evidence that the speculation is correct even being necessary. Horses vs unicorns.

 

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I'm starting to realize that maybe I should be a bit perplexed or mystified at how the UAP pursuit either got such high standards to begin with or how it is that it should have them.

Given how unreliable and littered with invalid affairs and fashionable nonsense at the administrative level... the social sciences are.

I mean, if the latter can be that lax, then how does the frolicking arena of UFOs attract and demand such grave and weighty concerns of the intellect?
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It's the preexisting assumptions that people bring to their intellectual pursuits.

"Skeptics" set what seem to be impossibly high standards for belief in what they call "woo" because they already believe in the non-existence of "woo". ("Woo" has a close-to-zero probability of being real, simply by definition, from its being "woo".)

The "social sciences" appear to have few if any standards, because their "studies" are designed from the outset to "prove" assumptions that the social "scientists" already believe to be true. The "studies" just provide them with illustrations of what they already believe, with rhetorical ammo to support their various ideological causes.

 

I ponder the same question. What's at stake with ufos such that so much effort and time is needed to debunk them? I heard a reporter the other day refer to Superdebunker Mick West as almost religious in his views. Why this unquestionable faith that ufos don't and can't exist?

I think it all has to do with a worldview they are protecting. Skeptics are protecting the scientific worldview of everything being knowable and explainable by science. If even the slightest crack in the door is allowed...a speeding metallic sphere, a vaporous phantom, a blurry shadow of a forest hominid--then they think science will be greatly undermined.

But actually that's not true. Yazata is a good example of someone who 100% believes in science and yet acknowledges the very real possibility of mysteries out there we don't expect. I'm of the same mind, though a little more gullible. Science doesn't necessarily collapse with the sudden dawning of preternatural phenomena. It just gets more focused on things that present as beyond all it's theories and facts, which is imo where it should've been all along. The worldview changes, but the world itself becomes realer and deeper and more abyssmal than before.
_

 

Going to suggest all this be split off to its own thread, maybe entitled 'Philosophizing and Reading Minds and Motives of Other Members - Anything to Avoid Actually Analyzing Accounts'. Problem, is, it would leave this thread dead, with nothing to discuss.

 

I think when it comes to alleged paranormal activity or UAP’s, the worldviews of those coming to the discussion, are nearly as relevant as the discussion itself. The personalities that are drawn to these debates makes for a worthwhile conversation. They can’t be ignored because we’re not dealing with absolutes when it comes to UFO’s. But, we run the risk of veering off into only analyzing the views of others instead of any semblance of evidence. (see this thread! lol)

It’s a valid point, though - we can’t dismiss the bias that we all have and how it shapes our thinking about things that are real but lack sufficient evidence to define what exactly they are.

 

That isn’t untrue. But, having observed the ebb and flow of this thread for a while now, and the banter around “woo,” I’d say that skeptics are not afraid of learning the truth if there turns out to be sufficient evidence for some of these UAP claims, rather they fear UFO enthusiasts lowering the bar of what should be considered evidence. And that will seep into other areas of science, potentially causing pseudo-science to become something it shouldn’t be.

 

Indeed.
Look at this weirdness:

It reads like a a parent advocating for "Participation" ribbons in sports.
Like we should set our standards low enough so that everything can get an award.

"Scientific standards are too high!" cries Yazata. "What is to become of the UFOs and the leprechauns!"

Seriously Yazata, is this really what you meant to write?

 

I think what Yazata has been saying throughout this thread, but emphasized here, is that with skeptics, the galloping in the distance will always be “horses,” while skeptics assume that “believers” will always spout “unicorns!” lol He’s saying, there’s a happy medium in between these two opposing (obviously biased) mindsets.

I think that’s what he was trying to convey, anyway. We are a bit stuck in this thread in that there seems to be two sides digging their heels into the sand - one insists that “there’s nothing here to see, move along,” and the other “it could be space aliens and we should believe nearly every outlandish witness account.”

There’s a lot of wide, open space between these two opposing mindsets to explore, but we seem stuck. Because bias? I don’t know, but as mentioned above, there is a sensible space in between that allows science to be respected yet opens us up to examine all that we don’t know, yet. Perhaps, it’s the need(?) to label UFO’s as something instead of leaving them to remain “unknown,” that trips us up.

 

What do you mean by 'stuck'? Is the goal for everyone to reach the same level and have the same views?

I'd say the real disagreement is over the rigor with which we examine and accept evidence and what conclusions can be drawn from them.

 

Why is there so much tension in this thread if it weren’t for trying to do away with that “wide, open space,” and get people to change their minds?

And that may come from our biases. I don’t know.

 

Yes. That is his strawmantra*. It is false.

It is quite simply that everybody sets their standard where trained/educated/experienced to set it. And mine and James' standard is higher than his.

Yazata has a standard as well - it's just lower. (Presumably, there are things we doesn't believe in without sufficient (for him) evidence or he never would have lived to adulthood.)

One might wonder if perhaps, when Yazata looks up from his standard in the direction of higher standards, he has trouble distinguishing "higher" from "infinitely high" and therefore assumes erroneously that they can never be met. But that's his shortcoming, not ours.

* © DaveC426913 2023-05-06

 

So if somebody already has beliefs about something before a discussion about it even begins, are they thereby justified in just ignoring and dismissing any arguments or evidence that doesn't fit their preconceptions?

I never wrote anything remotely like that, so please don't put your own words in my mouth.

Once again, we aren't talking about leprechauns. What we are talking about is the assumption that unidentified flying objects or unidentified aerial phenomena belong in the same class as leprechauns, which both of us would agree don't exist (except perhaps as items of folklore).

If we go in totally convinced that something doesn't exist, then it's unlikely that any humanly available evidence will move us off that fixed position. We will just find fault with the evidence because it isn't ideal. We will imagine possible sources of error (which will always exist) and assume that those sources of error must be active in the case in question, because otherwise the evidence might suggest the existence of what we so deeply believe doesn't exist.

As long as people address questions that way, in the blissful assumption that they already know what the answers will look like ("nothing to see here, move on" - only mundane, familiar, uninteresting hypotheses will be considered) then the whole inquiry will be biased from the outset and threatens to become circular and self-confirming.

What we should be doing is admitting that in the best of these UFO/UAP cases we don't know what we are dealing with and try to keep an open mind. We shouldn't just dismiss evidence merely because it isn't perceived as consistent with our initial biases and preconceptions. We definitely shouldn't dismiss it with sneers and ridicule.

 

Here are your words from your mouth:

You literally complained about impossibly high standards for woo.

No. That is a category error.

This 'they' you refer to can't be put in any class; because they are not well-defined. We have accounts of anomalies. We currently have no explanation. Therefore, they can't - by definition - be grouped as if they are related. You cannot conclude that they have the same source.

We skeptics are not saying 'they don't exist'; we skeptics are saying 'what is this "they" - exactly - are you enthusiasts talking about?' You don't even know different anomalies are related (since often enough some of them turn out to be misIDs or what have you).

What's left after eliminating misIDs and balloons and Venus is not a class; it is the absence of a class. A miscellaneous. And you have no business concluding they're related.

As always, they must each be treated on their own merits.


Look, what would you do if just one of these flying sphere sightings or tic-tac sightings got solved? If just one of them turned out to be a balloon or a hoax? Would you be so quick to wave that class around then? Would you say "Well, the class is that of balloons" or "the class is that of hoaxes", and then happily dismiss ALL the other accounts you've lumped into the class you made? No. I'll bet you'd suddenly decide that this one was an exception and pull it out of the class, yes?

So no. They are not a 'they', until and unless they are.

Until we have at the very least a working explanation - they must each be treated on their own merits.


So, again we skeptics are not saying 'they don't exist'; we skeptics are saying 'which "they" - exactly - are you talking about? cuz you can't talk about them all.'

 

Correct.

Correct!

Correct!

No rational skeptic dismisses evidence; what gets dismissed is enthusiasts' hasty, irrational unwarranted inferences and conclusions. That is the very crux of this dispute.

 

That's so corny.
''I do it for the pun of it"

 

Just out of curiosity, if ufos are such a silly and unsupported belief, deserving only of mockery as "woo" comparable to unicorns and leprechauns, why does science have to raise its standards so high in order to exclude it? Does it have to do the same for unicorns and leprechauns? Are the goalposts of what constitutes compelling evidence suddenly moved when we speak of metallic spheres, glowing discs, black triangles, and 40 ft long tic tacs? Why if they are so self-evidently absurd? Seems disingenuous to me.

 

They're not "silly"; it's just that the conclusion is unwarranted. Oftimes the conclusion is premised on silly reasoning.

The "woo" aspect is not due to the accounts themselves; it is due to the anti-science fans that use egregious logic to support their beliefs.

It doesn't raise them at all.

No, they are not moved. Who is filling your head with these ideas?

That's because they're all strawmen. You've made up those things as if they're held by scientists and skeptics, but they're not.